How a Pop-Up Store Pops Up

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A short lease at its temporary shop in SoHo allows Dockers a total of six weeks to decorate and install fixtures, operate the shop and then vacate the premises.CreditCreditElizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times

When people think of Dockers, the khaki pants, they may well think: Beige. Oxford shirt. Striped tie. Blazer. Loafers — with socks.

Levi Strauss & Co. called Dockers “casual pants” when it introduced the brand in 1986. The look was less dressy than a suit, and dressier than jeans. And after the company sent a manifesto, its “Guide to Casual Business Wear,” to human resource managers in 1992, business casual was born.

A new white-collar uniform took over the American workplace, and Dockers became a textbook success story in corporate brand-building.

But they call it fashion for a reason. Sales peaked in the mid-’90s at a billion dollars a year, according to a company spokesman, but then declined.

“People got sick of it,” said Maneesh K. Goyal, the founder of the marketing firm MKG, which is working with the company to refresh its image.

In 2011, Dockers introduced Alpha, a new line marketed to younger customers. The pants are lower on the waist, tighter in the seat and tapered at the hem. They’re cut like jeans.

And this month, Dockers opened its first pop-up store in New York City, at 25 Howard Street in SoHo, on the same block as Opening Ceremony and just across from Jil Sander. The 1,750-square-foot space, open Tuesdays through Sundays until Sept. 27, is spreading the word that khakis now come in reds, yellows, blues, orange and bright green; that they can fit baggy, slim and slimmer.

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Maneesh K. Goyal and Adrienne Lofton Shaw helped create the store.CreditRobert Caplin for The New York Times

This is the story of how that pop-up popped up.

The idea was to attract 18-to-34-year-old customers, said Adrienne Lofton Shaw, the chief marketing officer for Dockers, which is based in San Francisco. “In the past, 80 percent of the people who bought Dockers were 35 and older,” she said. “Now, it’s 50 percent who are over 35.”

Last October, Dockers hired MKG, which has offices in New York and Los Angeles and has done pop-up projects for clients like Delta Air Lines and the eyewear company Warby Parker.

This year, in March and April, MKG and Dockers outfitted an Airstream bus as a mobile Dockers store and sent it on tour, stopping in Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia for three weeks each. They partnered with GQ magazine to reach its readers, and hired local stylists to help customers get dressed. In Chicago, the bus brought in a barber; the haircuts were free.

The Dockers bus was advertised on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. In the three cities, Dockers gave away 750 pairs, to anyone who tried them on. Sales were not the goal, Mr. Goyal said. Exposure was.

Then it was time for New York. “For a style to penetrate, you have to be in New York,” Mr. Goyal said. “There’s no better way to get people to try them on than a pop-up store.”

Mr. Goyal started with location.

“SoHo has good foot traffic; it’s connected to the neighborhood, art, fashion, the New Museum,” he said. “You can’t have a pop-up in a B-list location. If you can’t find a grand-prize location, don’t do a pop-up.

“Never do Chelsea,” he went on. “Except for openings and Saturdays, no one is there.”

He said the meatpacking district’s vitality was overplayed.

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The 1,750-square-foot space is open Tuesdays through Sundays until Sept. 27.CreditRobert Caplin for The New York Times

Next: timing. If you’re an apparel company looking to make a splash in New York, you might want to open during Fashion Week, when people are clothing-crazed.

And the time to look for a September pop-up location is late July or early August, because of the commercial real estate market. “Landlords don’t always want to lease to us,” Mr. Goyal said. “They don’t want to ruin the chances of a 5-to-10-year lease.” A month before a pop-up, though, is a good time to scout. Even if a landlord has a tenant for five years starting in October, Mr. Goyal said, “negotiations take a long time.”

On Aug. 1, Dushane Ramsay, MKG’s account manager for Dockers, and Janna Ferner-Bell, who produced the Dockers pop-up for MKG, visited what would be their first choice, 25 Howard Street. They also visited another site, 281 Lafayette Street, but rejected it for being on a street known more for restaurants than for fashion. Before that, they had looked at about 20 listings, many online, and dismissed them.

At the Howard Street address, a street-level rectangular space, Ms. Ferner-Bell asked a lot of questions of Rebekah Metz, a broker for Metropolitan Commercial Real Estate in New York City. The place, which is rented for events, was being painted, and new light fixtures were being installed. The wood floor was badly patched, and the concrete subfloor was showing through.

Can we have a sign in the window? (Yes.) Is the floor gray concrete throughout? (Yes.) But we want all wood. (You’ll have it.) Will the air-conditioning unit stay in the room, or will it go to the roof? (It’s going to the roof.) Can we nail into the walls? (Yes.) Do we patch up after? (Yes). Can we use the fixtures? (Yes.)

Ms. Ferner-Bell and Mr. Ramsay looked up at the lights, which included older hanging ones and new recessed ones. “We like the hanging lights,” Mr. Ramsay said. “They add grit and texture.” He added: “The recessed lights make people feel like Dockers that are being sold at Macy’s.”

By Aug. 21, MKG had signed a six-week lease: a week and a half to install, three and a half weeks for the shop and a week for deconstruction and repairs. Dockers would pay for HVAC, electricity and Internet. MKG filed for permits for liquor and food. Both Dockers and the owner of the space held insurance.

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A SoHo store is part of Dockers’ rebranding.CreditRobert Caplin for The New York Times

Two days earlier, MKG’s in-house designers and Dockers’ staff had finalized drawings for the shop, and MKG’s construction team had already started building the fixtures in the company’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They made display cases from recycled pine; put wheels on rolling metal racks; cut black and white linoleum tiles for the free barbershop; and vacuum-pressed plastic over bricks and then painted them white.

Construction finished in five days. But ad hoc doesn’t come cheap. The total cost of the project, including rental of the space — $33,000 for six weeks, plus a $33,000 security deposit — is expected to total $300,000 to $400,000, Mr. Ramsay said.

The shop opened on Sept. 4, a day before the beginning of Fashion Week.

It was every bit an on-trend boutique. Vintage typewriters, globes and luggage shared display space with the clothes. The décor was equal parts Design Within Reach and Brooklyn D.I.Y.

Walk-ins could buy Dockers Alpha collection pants in 10 colors not available elsewhere, like an orange, a deep purple-black and a dark brick. When a purchase was made, the salesperson pulled out a drawer marked with that color, and a light flashed on a corresponding pair hanging on the wall above. The customer’s pants would be custom-dyed in Turkey and shipped direct.

Freebies were on hand to lure in foot traffic, like Stumptown coffee, served hot or cold at the counter. Other enticements in coming days would include free anchor tattoos — variations on the Dockers logo — from Three Kings Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Stylish 18-to-34-year-olds milled about, and Dockers was keeping track. By 6:30 p.m., 158 people had come through the store, some buying, some not.

One was Abraham Grafales, 28, getting a free haircut in the rear of the shop, from Eric Holmes of Blind Barber on the Lower East Side.

Mr. Grafales, who works at a Club Monaco on Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, said he was a regular customer of the retail barbershop. When he heard about the pop-up, he came right over for his usual haircut, free, and to check out the competition.

Because of an editing error, a picture caption in some editions last Sunday with an article about a Dockers pop-up store misstated its square footage. As the article correctly noted, the store is 1,750 square feet, not 17,500.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section MB, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: How a Pop-Up Store Pops Up. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe